With so many distractions pulling teens and young adults with unique learning needs in different directions, now more than ever, parents must come equipped with more tools to help coach their children to success. Not only is it important that parents understand how to help diverse learners set clearly defined goals, but it’s also essential that parents understand the role of motivation. Specifically, parents need to know how to help adolescents and young adults develop a strong ‘why’ for achieving goals.
Developing Motivation Begins with Goal-Setting
Before we delve into helping your child develop the motivation to achieve goals, it’s important to take a look first and foremost at how to help your child develop goals in the first place. Decades of research indicates that some of the highest rates of goal achievement happen when goals follow the SMART template. SMART stands for:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Relevant
T – Time-Bound
Examples of SMART Goals
SMART goals can be created for a variety of different objectives, including academic, vocational, and personal goals. SMART goals include a clearly defined behavior that both you and your child understand, the goal should be meaningful for your child and should have a clear timeline for achievement. Some examples of how a parent might help a child transform a traditional goal into a SMART goal include:
Traditional Goal #1: Devon will be more organized.
SMART Goal #1: In the next three months, Devon will improve organizational skills by recording all assigned homework assignments in his online calendar and completing at least 90% of homework assignments and projects by the due date assigned as measured by his online classroom portal.
Traditional Goal #2: Lara will be more timely.
SMART Goal #2: For the next two weeks, Lara will travel from home to work safely on her assigned bus route with enough time to arrive at least 5 minutes early to work, as measured by her online time clock reporting system.
Clearly, there’s a difference between a traditional goal and SMART goals in how they set individuals up to succeed. American writer Zig Ziglar once said, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” SMART goals provide parents with a clear direction of how to aim their efforts and support for their child.
SMART + Motivation = Success
But even the best-written goals won’t matter without the right motivation. Both you and your child need to have a clear ‘why’ statement for setting the SMART goal in the first place. It involves asking yourself and your child:
- Why do I want my child to achieve this goal?
- Why does my child need to achieve this goal?
- What are the benefits? How does my child see the benefits of achieving the goal in tangible ways?
- Do these benefits outweigh the short-term efforts my child has to make to achieve the goal? If not, how can I better connect to my child’s ‘why’?
6 Steps to Help Your Child Develop a Strong “Why”
Now that you understand how to set goals that support your child’s success and about how having strong motivation can help unique learners succeed, it’s about connecting the pieces together. The six steps below will help you and your child work together to define a clear motivation for a goal with a focus on achievement. After reading the steps below, download our free fillable .pdf worksheet to help you and your child begin to outline new goals. If you have additional questions or need support in helping your child set and develop goals, Life Skills Advocate can help.
STEP ONE: Confirm that the goal or objective is clear and follows SMART principles.
As outlined above, before you begin to work on a goal with your child, make sure that it follows SMART principles. Identify what the specific behavior is, how you plan to measure it, and the timelines for achievement. Research supports that both child goals and parent goals can be achieved at the same rates as long as the right motivation is in place.
STEP TWO: Identify the barriers to the goal or the objective.
Next, it’s important to examine why the behavior isn’t happening already. What are the barriers to your child demonstrating the goal? Do they need to learn something new? Do they need more guidance in one area over another? Is there one step in particular that causes the most challenges?
Also, step back and examine where the goal rests on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy describes that basic human needs for food, shelter, and safety need to be addressed before higher level needs like community and belonging can be addressed. When it comes to barriers, it’s important to make note of the Hierarchy and how it relates to barriers. Are your child’s lower order needs being met, or are they a barrier that must be overcome first?
STEP THREE: Establish motivations.
Once you have a clear goal and an idea of the barriers in the way, it’s time to start looking at motivation. As mentioned above, knowing the underlying motivations for why a goal is essential can help the goal succeed. But it’s important to recognize that your motivations may be different than your child’s. Your understanding of why a goal is essential may be very different.
Consider the goal of organizational skills and homework. A parent might be motivated to accomplish that goal for academic and later employment success. But a child may not have those motivations or consider that a strong ‘why’ for engaging in those behaviors. However, a child might instead connect to the motivation for bringing homework home so that there’s less conflict or ‘nagging’ from a parent. The goal is the same, but the motivation is very different.
Ask the following questions:
- Who is involved in meeting this goal? Parents? Family members? Teachers?
- Why do you, as parents, want this goal to happen?
- Why do friends and family want this goal to happen?
- Why should your child want this goal to happen?
- If those motivations are different, how can you capture that in the why statement?
STEP FOUR: Write out a clear “why” statement.
As part of developing the SMART goal, draft an actual why statement that captures your child’s motivation. Once you identify that those motivations are different than your own, focus on the areas that your child finds meaningful. Make the statement focused, clear, and straightforward.
STEP FIVE: Identify the milestones that show progress.
Once you have a clear why statement and a sense of motivation, develop several benchmark milestones for your child that can help to show progress. Consider the goal above to arrive at work on time. Perhaps the first milestone is that your child comes to work on time for two days in a row, then one week in a row, and then finally two weeks in a row.
When your child meets a milestone, celebrate progress. Focus on achievements more than setbacks. Given you’ve already analyzed the barriers that might get in the way, if your child misses a milestone, it also helps your child get back on track as quickly as possible.
STEP SIX: Review your child’s motivation since it may change.
Finally, continue to frequently review your child’s motivation and the ‘why’ statement. As time passes and your child gains success, the motivation may change. For example, continuing with the goal of arriving to work on time, your child initially may not have the same motivations. But with greater success, maybe your child’s motivation moves from ‘so I get a paycheck’ to ‘so I can get a promotion.’ Have regular conversations with your child about the milestones and continue to revise the motivation statements.
Further Reading
- Life Skills Advocate Blog: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- SMART Goals: How the Application of SMART Goals Can Contribute to Achievement of Student Learning Outcomes
- SMART IEPs – NCWD/Youth
- Find Your Why by Simon Sinek
- Know Your Why: Finding and Fulfilling Your Calling in Life by Kent Costa
- Vroland‐Nordstrand, K., Eliasson, A. C., Jacobsson, H., Johansson, U., & Krumlinde‐Sundholm, L. (2016). Can children identify and achieve goals for intervention? A randomized trial comparing two goal‐setting approaches. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 58(6), 589-596.